


I Thought You Were The Sweetest Kill (Did You Even Know?)

by Side_Writer



Series: Long Days, Sleepless Nights [2]
Category: Three Rivers
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 06:13:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13475379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Side_Writer/pseuds/Side_Writer
Summary: It's a little disconcerting how relatively well she's taking this gut punch of a realisation, all things considered. (AKA the one where Miranda gets in over her head.)





	I Thought You Were The Sweetest Kill (Did You Even Know?)

**Author's Note:**

> Bracketed numbers denote day, story in non-chronological order despite being told it reads better chronologically because I just had to mess with it. Title from Sweetest Kill, by Broken Social Scene.

_“This week or last week, I don’t really care about it anymore,_

_….Your house or mine, I don’t really care about it anymore,_

_…Monday, Monday, Monday,_

_…I spend the night, I lay awake and miss you when you go.”_

 

\- Tegan and Sara

 

**(23)**

  
She meets with Andy before their double lung transplant on a 19-year-old cystic fibrosis patient. He watches with amused eyes as she tries to flavour the hospital's mud water masquerading as coffee with creamer and sugar to no avail – she finally gives up and just drinks. They talk mindless crap at first: how long before Ryan alienates yet another nurse, the Steelers' game he plans to attend, what makes the coffee so damn bad. He has deeper laugh lines around his eyes these days and it makes her feel old.  
  
"So, you and him, huh?" Andy says eventually, running a finger around the edge of his paper cup.  
  
She raises an eyebrow at him and looks to the far end of the cafeteria where Lisa is lunching with a group of ER residents. "You and her, huh?"  
  
"Yeah, okay," he laughs briefly. "We're even now." He toys with a plastic spoon until it snaps, drops the pieces into his empty cup. "Look, I know it's not my place to say, but -"  
  
"Andy," she cuts him off. "You don't have to."  
  
He frowns. "No, hear me out. He's my friend and I know him. I know guys like him. I don't want to see you get…"  
  
"...get hurt?" she supplies, incredulous. The absurdity of it makes her want to laugh, but he's being so serious and all. "I don't get hurt, Andy."  
  
He gazes at her silently for a moment longer and then looks down at the table. "Yeah. Let's get on with these lungs."  
  
She’s still musing on his words long after the girl is wheeled off to recovery, spends a good half hour just blanking in the doctors' lounge instead of going back to the ICU. Her post-op report lies abandoned on the couch and some talk show blares out from the TV in the corner and all the while she sits and stares at nothing in particular.  
  
He knows her better than anyone else around here does, which is surprising to most people because they don’t know the history, but the fact remains that Andy gets her in some ways that others don’t. He knows of her distaste for anchovies and onions, her secret penchant for trashy TV, and the meaning behind her latest tattoo – after she caught him staring at it in theatre one day. He knows exactly why she doesn’t like New York City and Boston, is privy to the messes that played out over the years. He can usually talk her through most situations but he knows when to leave her be. He is particularly adept at reading between her lines, has this uncanny ability to tell when she’s omitting the truth and when she’s straight up lying.  
  
And she’s a pretty good liar, even to herself.  
  
(She goes home alone and spends quality time with her DVR and an expensive bottle of red she'd been saving, just to prove some fuck-all point to herself.)  


 

**(72)**

  
He asks her to come with him to Michigan for Memorial Day weekend, the unsaid part being that she is going to meet his family. She’s lying back on the couch, her feet in his lap, and she’s half-watching something trashy she recorded earlier, half-flicking through the latest BMJ. He rubs at her left heel and watches her carefully.  
  
She doesn’t say anything at first because she’s so caught off-guard and then she starts to freak out a little, internally so that he can’t see. She keeps her eyes steadfastly on the medical journal.  
  
“You can say no,” he says after a sufficiently awkward pause. “Or at least stop pretending to read that article because your eyes haven’t moved from the same spot.”  
  
She lowers the journal and flicks her gaze towards him, resists the urge to swat him with the magazine. “I was deliberating,” she says instead. He smiles at her, bullshit and all, and she can’t help her lips twitching back – his eyes kind of light up from within when he smiles, however insanely ridiculous that sounds, and it’s impossible not to want to respond in kind.  
  
(She usually laughs at people like this, the worst kind of ridiculous, sentimental sappy fools.)  
  
He turns back to the screen and his brow furrows – she’s trying out the latest offering in the category of supernatural young adults fighting off supernatural evils. “You have atrocious taste in TV,” he murmurs. “I’m changing this.”  
  
She looks down at the page, chews at her lip thoughtfully. “Okay.”  
  
He reaches for the remote and clicks over to her Netflix screen, starts scrolling through the recently added list, absently stroking at her calf with his other thumb. “What was that documentary you wanted me to watch?”  
  
“Okay,” she says again, a little quieter. She waits for him to look back at her, for it to settle with him and for it to bloom into realisation on his face. His eyes are dark but warm and he smiles again, a softer lift of his lips this time.  
  
“Okay,” he echoes.  


 

**(51)**

  
He picks her up after work on Monday in his stupid, shiny Mercedes.  
  
He spent the weekend in Michigan, visiting his family, and she has somehow spent most of that time missing the warmth and weight of his body in bed, like some crazy _girlfriend_ or something.  
  
She's restless with a pent-up energy that’s been building the last few days and he gives her this lazy smile and they end up tussling in the backseat, fumbling at buttons and zips, right there in the hospital carpark. It's cramped and messy and she is so riled up, she comes twice before he makes it.  
  
(Thank God for the stupid, shiny tinted windows, on his stupid, shiny Mercedes.)  
  
Afterwards, he traces her collarbone with his lips and she stares up at the roof, finally sated.  


 

**(93)**

  
He flirts with anything that moves – she has known this about him since she first met him, when he tried to be all smooth and suave with her and she had caught herself between unbridled laughter and impatience, kicking him over to Andy so fast his head should have spun. Even now, she unsurprisingly has as little patience for it as she ever did, but it’s tinged with something else that feels a lot like jealously.  
  
(Tinged is putting it kindly. She is sometimes so jealous it makes her physically uncomfortable, her skin prickling and her palms marked where her fingernails have etched the surface.)  
  
She is a bit (a lot) of a passive-aggressive bitch about it, which she hates but can’t help. It makes her feel weirdly insecure in a way she’s not used to feeling and like she should be able to shoulder this a lot better – like she shouldn’t care so much.  
  
But she does.  
  
So she rolls her eyes and scowls at work, grits her teeth and won’t talk to him at the bar, pushes his hands away from her body and curls into her pillow. She can never quite bring herself to voice it out loud because it’s embarrassing and beneath her and there’s a high chance he’ll find it amusing. (And if he laughs at her, then she might have to kill him.)  
  
When she sees him in the hallways of Three Rivers with a gorgeous honey-blonde rep at his side, the ugly beast within rears its head again and she seethes. The rep is in a skin-tight dress that leaves little to the imagination and she has never been so acutely aware of her own lack of curves as she is at this moment.  
  
“Whoa,” Inder breathes out, staring so hard his eyes just might fall out of his head. “Who is that?”  
  
“Modrotech,” say both Andy and Ryan in unison, the former turning to give the latter a look. “You know her?” Andy asks.  
  
“Not personally,” Ryan shrugs. “But I think David does.”  
  
She keeps her face as neutral as possible, but she doesn’t miss the way Andy flicks his gaze across to her, or the exchange of looks between him and Pam when they think she’s ensconced behind a computer screen. She definitely doesn’t miss Andy casually following her into the doctors’ lounge and then pretending to search for whatever amongst the pile of crap on the table.  
  
“You need something?” she asks.  
  
“Yeah,” he nods, looking down at the TV guide he’s just picked up before looking back at her, his face sheepish. “Actually, no. Sorry.” He clears his throat and sits down on the edge of the table. “You okay?”  
  
She tilts her head and gazes at him; he stares unflinchingly back. “Remember the night after my first shift here,” she says, and he nods again, slowly. “You said you and I, we don’t bullshit each other, ever.”  
  
He had been partially responsible for securing her a position at Three Rivers, stepping in to vouch for her when Mass. General had all but decimated her fledgling career, denying her a fellowship and refusing her any letter of recommendation. In fairness, she had brought a lot of it upon herself, having been lost and aimless for some time after her mother died. Still, when Andy called her, she had initially lashed out and unfairly accused him of being her father’s hand puppet. He had looked past her hostility and anger and despair, had ignored her request for him to not call her again, and had reminded her she had an ally and a job just a plane ride away.  
  
Working in Pittsburgh had never been a part of her plan, but with a spotty track record and several incidents she would have rather forgotten still lying fresh in her wake, there had been little choice but to move into William Foster’s shadow. Her father had retired by the time she officially stepped foot in the hospital, but Andy, his anointed successor, his favoured student of yore, her friend from the days of visiting Three Rivers just to be able to see William, had been there to welcome her home.  
  
“Yeah,” he sighs. “Rena burnt the spaghetti. How could I forget?” He chuckles a little, eyes far away for a second. “Okay.”  
  
“Okay,” she echoes. “Let’s cut the crap.”  
  
“I want you to be happy,” he starts. “And if you’re happy, I’m happy for you. But you need to start actually talking to him instead of having these grouchfests all the time.”  
  
She should feel embarrassed that he’s noticed enough to bring this up, which probably means other people have noticed too, but she honestly just feels relieved. It’s as if by saying it out loud, he’s lightened the load of carrying this around and keeping it to herself, of trying to glower it into non-existence.  
  
“I can’t have you skulking around the OR with a scalpel in hand and snapping at everyone every time he smiles at someone,” Andy continues, and she snorts, rolling her eyes heavenward. “Look, David can be an idiot, but I think he’s an idiot that really likes you.”  
  
He leaves the table edge and takes several steps over to where she’s standing, puts a hand out to her. “And I think you like him too,” he says quietly, rubbing at her arm in an almost fatherly manner. She’s strongly reminded of Mr Lee bidding her farewell that afternoon in Michigan. “It’s okay to open up, Miranda. It’s okay to trust someone.”  
  
He slides his arm around her shoulders and squeezes softly, pulling her close for a brief moment, and it feels so comforting and familial that she wants to throw her arms back around him and protect this somehow. She wishes that she could tether his friendship, like it were a physical entity, to her somehow so that she might never lose it.  
  
(She frustrates David to no end that night by giving him the silent treatment because she still cannot bring herself to begin to fix this, and remaining bitter and angry is the easier path. She itches for the fight.)  
  
(He disappoints her by keeping his temper and going to stay at his apartment.)  


 

**(44)**

  
They don’t eat together at work. She usually either skips lunch entirely or hides out in the doctor’s lounge, preferring to be left alone while she blanks in front of the TV. Sometimes, if she’s feeling particularly irascible, she steals away to her car and naps across the backseat. Of course, her ability to do this goes out the window when he starts driving them in together so she eventually starts taking his keys and napping across the plush backseat of the Mercedes.  
  
Today feels like a backseat nap day.  
  
She’s in a complete funk about an upcoming review with Sophia that she absolutely does not want to do, not least because it’s with Sophia and things have never quite been the same with the older doctor since the time they treated the gymnast. (Since the time she came clean about those rumours.) She’s also premenstrual as all fuck and her temperament is more mercurial than usual so she needs, really _needs_ his keys soon.  
  
The thing about David, however, is that he’s far more sociable than she and tracking him down is a bit of a task in itself. Lunch for David usually means a courtyard table with a couple of the nurses so he can get his flirt on, or a loud and excessively male catch-up in the cafeteria with fellow bimbo and luxury car enthusiasts. (Actually, she has no idea what they discuss, she just knows she never wants to be around them.) Occasionally, if Ryan has been roped into fetching them lunch, there is a transplant team thing that occurs – she knows because Ryan always asks her to join them and she always declines. It’s not that she actively hates her colleagues, it’s just that she really prefers being alone for at least some part of the day.  
  
(Okay, so she really prefers being alone, period.)  
  
She pages him to no avail and he won’t answer his phone, so she takes her irritation to the cafeteria and stands at the periphery looking in. A hand beckons at her through the air and she sights Andy at one of the booths, sitting with Lisa next to him and David opposite. It is probably one of the last places she wants to be right now but Andy’s outright waving at her, inclining his head to the empty seat, and David turns around and sees her, so she sucks in a deep breath and reluctantly walks over.  
  
The moment she slides onto the bench seat next to David, there is a beat in which both Lisa and Andy watch them with unmistaken anticipation and then Andy smiles like he’s enjoying this awkwardness and Lisa clears her throat and becomes intensely focused on her sandwich. She tries not to let it bother her any more than necessary but her veneer of civility is already wearing incredibly thin.  
  
“How’s your day?” Andy asks, and while he’s still wearing that annoying smile, his eyes are kind.  
  
“Shitty,” she says shortly.  
  
David turns away from his food to give her a look but she doesn’t meet his eyes, and she knows he wants to do something that would definitely be too affectionate and too public for her to allow, so he just continues burning a hole in the side of her head.  
  
“Take a breather,” Andy advises. “Have some lunch.”  
  
“Can’t,” she shakes her head. “I’ve got pre-op for that intestinal transplant this afternoon.”  
  
“The cyclist? I can do it.”  
  
“Andy Yablonski offering to do grunt work?” David looks between them with mock awe. “What do you have on him and how do I get in on this?”  
  
Lisa gives a short laugh but her eyes flicker with uncertainty, especially when Andy laughs too and doesn’t answer. The table falls into silence for a moment before Andy resumes whatever conversation he’d previously been having, and she catches the words “fishing” and “cabin” and promptly zones out, staring across the way at an elderly couple slowly shuffling across the floor, hands clasped tightly. It isn’t until she sees Andy slide out of the opposite seat that she turns back to the table, and it isn’t lost on her when he glances over at Lisa and the blonde doctor hastens to follow him.  
  
“Miranda, relax a little,” he says. She bites her tongue to keep from snarking something about wanting to do exactly that before he beckoned her over here and ruined her plans. “Stay and enjoy the beautiful company of Dr Lee.” Lisa giggles again and Andy playfully grabs David’s chin and studies him. “I mean, look at this face! I’m starting to see it, you know?”  
  
“Oh, shut _up_ ,” she says with a scowl, rolling her eyes as David swats Andy’s hand away good-naturedly.  
  
Andy gathers his and Lisa’s trays and they walk off together, Lisa’s hand curled around Andy’s upper arm. David nudges her shoulder, bringing her back.  
  
“You okay?” he asks, cracking the knuckles on his left hand. She stares down at them, shakes her head no. “Anything I can do?”  
  
She thinks about asking for his keys and then she thinks about just making do with the couch in the doctor’s lounge. She suddenly thinks about curling up on the couch at home, half-asleep and neatly tucked under his chin, her cheek pressed to the pulse point of his neck.  
  
“Hey,” he says, nudging her again, dipping his head to get a good look at her.  
  
As if acting of its own volition, triggered by his voice or something, she leans into his side, her head inclining towards him; he shifts his position so that his shoulder pillows her. It’s not exactly comfortable and she is loathe to admit to needing this kind of contact, but when he snakes his arm behind her, she automatically curls in closer to his body. He smells familiar beneath his white coat.  
  
He doesn’t say nor do anything more than that, even ceasing to eat the rest of his lunch, and she manages to block out the surrounds for about five minutes, which is far from a nap in the car but is oddly soothing in its own way. In fact, when he gently shrugs her off because she needs to go scrub in, it is jarringly discomforting to leave his side. “To be continued,” he whispers in her ear, and she looks at him dazedly, the fatigue still settled within her. She grabs a coffee on her way out, just to be safe.  
  
Later that night, he makes good on his promise, running them a bath and lighting these scented candles she’s had sitting in the bathroom for years, so long she’s forgotten about them. His hands are firm as they rub and knead her shoulders and neck and she can barely help collapsing back against him in the warm water, eyes fluttering closed.  
  
She’s not usually one for these kinds of gestures, but she’ll allow it, just this once.  


 

**(107)**

  
David is rostered on for nights so she uncharacteristically accepts Pam’s invitation out for drinks with the nurses after work, because she figures it’s time to give in to societal pressures a little, to see how the vast majority live. She casually tells Andy, who looks at her like she’s grown a second head  – _who are you and what have you done with Miranda Foster?_ When she arrives at the bar to find a couple of the nurses, Lisa (whom Andy probably sent along) and Ryan sitting around a table, she realises too late that this may have been a grave mistake. She catches the bemused looks a couple of the nurses give her as she approaches and she knows they think she’s lost or something. She orders a beer, arranges her face into neutral, and hopes for the best.  
  
The night drags from the get-go. The conversation is not exactly riveting nor stimulating enough for her to pretend to participate for very long, and most of them are already buzzed and giggly so she feels extra sober in their midst. There is no food on the table. She thinks about work nights out with Andy and David and Inder, even from before, when things were a little simpler and their biggest issue was which carb-laden baskets to order first.  
  
They start a game of Fuck, Marry, Kill that she absolutely does not want to play. She does an obligatory first round where she fucks Yousef, marries Dev and kills Luc, and then point blank refuses to do anymore. David’s name comes up a lot, particularly followed by “fuck” – and every time someone chooses to sleep with him, the giggling gets louder and the sneaky glances at her become less furtive. She gets a funny feeling about the direction the night is headed but tries to quell the simmering anxiety with another beer.  
  
Eventually, it happens. One of the ICU nurses, Rehka, turns to her directly and asks, “How did you manage to lock down Dr Lee?” The hums of interest that go around the group confirm that this question has been debated before and she gets a twist of unease in her stomach.  
  
Pam takes a sip of her drink, meets her eyes over the rim of her glass. “ _Lock down_?” the nurse says somewhat dismissively. “Come on, it’s not like they’re married.”  
  
“So?” Rehka presses, ignoring Pam, her face eagerly alight for details.  
  
She chews on the inside of her cheek as the uncomfortable silence spreads before lifting a shoulder quickly. “Didn’t realise I had.”  
  
“Oh, bullshit,” says a blonde nurse whose name she can’t recall. “You’ve got him _so_ whipped, it’s kind of hilarious.”  
  
And then, it’s like the floodgates open and the commentary comes flying thick and fast. She hears the suggestive remarks getting lewder by the second, the blatant and decidedly unashamed lusting for David right in front of her, the thinly veiled surprise about _why her – of all people_ , the fake congratulatory lip service for “bagging him”. Annoying third person references to her aside, there’s a certain cattiness about it all and it feels a lot like she’s back in high school; it momentarily stuns her, but it doesn’t surprise her in the least.  
  
“You guys, please,” Pam says, in an effort to put a stop to things. “Let’s talk about something else.”  
  
“Don’t even try to tell me this isn’t the most interesting discussion we’ve had all night,” Rehka says, waving a finger in Pam’s face. “And that you wouldn’t be all up in it if she wasn’t sitting there.”  
  
Pam glances at her and she sees a flash of something in the nurse’s eyes, guilt maybe, in how she quickly looks away. She feels a little sick even though in the back of her mind she knows, has always known, the gossiping was inevitable, that her personal life would again be a free-for-all. It still doesn’t change how much it bothers her. It still doesn’t change the fact that she did not sign up for this tonight.  
  
“I think you and David look really good together,” Lisa pipes up, giving her a hesitant smile. She doesn’t say anything in reply and just stares at the blonde doctor, who takes it as a sign to keep going. “I mean, your children would have amazing bone structure.”  
  
“Girl, what are you talking about?” asks Rehka, as the other nurses look on.  
  
Lisa looks around, wide-eyed. “Their faces are incredible. Don’t you think that would be a beautiful gene pool?” The fact that nobody responds doesn’t seem to register with her.  
  
(Also, Lisa Reed is kind of a dipshit and she has no idea why Andy hasn’t figured that one out yet.)  
  
“Anyway, I bet the sex is hot, right?” Rehka continues with the air of someone whose mental filter has disappeared. “Please let me keep that fantasy alive.”  
  
She resolutely keeps her mouth shut and her eyes hard, even as the nurses fall about laughing. Upending the last of her beer, she goes to stand up when Ryan’s pager goes off. It’s at that moment that everyone else seems to remember that he’s even sitting there with them, that he’s been there the entire time. “Uh, Miranda,” he says uncertainly, looking over at her. “I think you need to check this out.”  
  
“What is it?” she asks.  
  
“Something’s going on with the heart that was assigned to Mr Donovan,” he replies, gathering up his bag and preparing to leave.  
  
She squints as she tries to remember. “The guy from this morning?”  
  
“Is everything okay?” Pam says concernedly.  
  
Ryan scans the page, shrugs helpfully and looks at her again. “Let’s go,” he says. He waits for her to grab her jacket and fish around in the pocket for something to cover her drinks, but Pam puts out a hand to stop her and shakes her head.  
  
“Seriously,” the nurse mutters. “Don’t.” Miranda nods and leaves without saying goodbye, Ryan following in her wake. Behind her, she hears Pam’s disapproving tone as she addresses the table, “You guys suck, you know that?”  
  
They emerge onto the street and head in the direction of work, Ryan scrolling through his phone, she trying to shake her irritation from before. “They really do suck,” he says unexpectedly and when she raises an eyebrow, he jerks a thumb back at the bar. “Sorry you had to sit through that.”  
  
She blinks at him in surprise but he doesn’t say anything more, just continues walking down Fifth Avenue. When they reach the outskirts of the hospital, Ryan shoves his hands into his pockets and turns to face her. “Well, goodnight,” he says.  
  
“Aren’t we going in?” she asks confusedly.  
  
“No,” he shakes his head. “Mr Donovan’s heart is fine.”  
  
“What the hell are you talking about? Why did you get paged then?”  
  
He smiles slightly. “That was me paging myself as an excuse to leave. I figured you might want an out too.” He shifts a little uncomfortably as she stares at him and then hitches his bag a little higher. She is honestly a little astounded by him right now and she can’t work out if that’s a good thing. “I’m headed home,” he finally says, turning to walk off when she still doesn’t say anything.  
  
He’s almost half a block away when she finally finds her voice, calling out at his retreating form, “Hey, Ryan!” and he swivels around, gives her a little salute – and she smiles at him.  


 

**(79)**

  
She wakes to the sound of the shower running; she is alone in his bed, bare under the covers. She lies there a moment, indulging in the warm haze of sleep still fogging her mind, breathing in the faint scent of him that lingers on the bed sheets beside her. Sitting up, she catches a glimpse of her kinked hair and the dark shadows under her eyes, and wonders briefly if he sees what she sees.  
  
When she slides the door open and steps in behind him, he doesn’t start, not even when she presses a light kiss in between his shoulder blades. As her hair starts to dampen down around her face, she traces an abstract pattern, chasing it across his back, up his shoulders, and down his chest as he turns around to face her. Her gaze is roving, drinking him in.  
  
It is a fact she has come to accept that she really likes looking at him. She watches him when he's pretending to know how to cook, the sunlight from the kitchen window illuminating his dark eyes and the straight line of his jaw. She stares at him at work when no one else is watching, the white coat draping his tall frame just so, his hands as they fly into action. And she likes him here, in this tiny shower that’s barely big enough for two people to manoeuvre comfortably, so close she can count the dots of water on his arms.  
  
He kisses her slowly, hot and hard, under the stream of water. She groans involuntarily when he pulls away to lay his lips against her neck, that spot behind her ear, his tongue flicking roughly against the skin – she’s never been one to hold back in the heat of the moment, but with him she’s almost unapologetically obvious and often vocal in her want, and it seems to spur him on further each time. He skims a thumb across her nipple and pushes her against the cool tiles, fingers trailing down her stomach. She hadn’t planned on this kind of morning, had actually been wholly intent on sharing a quick shower and getting dressed for work, but here they are and she’s not doing very much to dissuade him from continuing. By the time his teeth graze her inner thigh, she’s past the point of being able to reel it back anyway.  
  
She lets him nudge her legs apart and runs a hand through his mop of wet hair, lets him work his way through her, tries to resist the urge to push herself onto him too much. He is well-versed here, something she doesn’t let herself think about too much, his talented mouth sure and warm on her skin, a finger and then two, relentless until she caves. With a hand at her hip to keep her steady, he takes hold of her between his lips and draws her in like he needs her to breathe or something, his long fingers flexing deep, and she cannot control any of the sounds escaping her mouth, he’s just so – _fuck._ She explodes in place, knees buckling as she folds in on herself, her face buried into his hair. Oh, _sweet fuck._  
  
He waits a beat and then brings himself up, pressing her between himself and the tiles. She feels a little light-headed and the swirling steam seems to stick in the back of her throat, but it doesn’t stop her from grabbing at him, hands at his neck, his back, pulling him as close to her as she can. He bites down on her lower lip and she kisses him a bit desperately, tastes herself on his tongue, hands tight like she can't let him go.  
  
It worries her slightly that she might not be able to.  


 

**(114)**

  
The plumbing goes off in the paediatric wing so the patients get re-allocated to different wards while maintenance re-works the entire system up there. The NICU babies come down to the ICU and for a few mornings, her rounds are punctuated by fits of crying. She looks over at them in their incubators with their breathing tubes, their scrawny little fists and feet, their purpley skin, and half-wonders how anyone bears to have children in the first place. How does anyone live with their heart that far outside their body?  
  
Inder is a giant pile of mush around them, wandering over to their side of the ward, making faces at them through the glass. He gravitates towards a tiny premie, only 26 weeks old, whose parents have named Rohan. He starts giving her these updates about Rohan’s progress every so often, when they’re on their way back from a procurement run or when they’re updating their notes at the nurses station. It’s a little nonsensical, a little strange, but it’s also a little sweet. ( _Inder is totally clucky,_ she tells David one night, and he laughs and says someone should let his girlfriend know.)  
  
When the plumbing is fixed and the babies move back upstairs, Inder hems and haws about being a total weirdo creeping around the NICU and wanting to find out how Rohan’s doing. “You _are_ a total weirdo,” she tells him. “And when you go, would you please tell his parents I say hi.” He smiles this giant smile at her and it is almost positively endearing.  
  
Rohan doesn’t make it. Rationally, she knows it was an outcome that had a fair chance of eventuating, but Inder’s reports have been so optimistic that it comes as a complete blow to see her colleague red-eyed one morning. He doesn’t say much and she feels a little helpless, asking if he wants to sit out the rounds or if he wants to take a longer lunch break. He gives her a watery smile, a far cry from the ones she’s gotten used to, and tells her he’ll be okay, so she leaves him alone.  
  
They do the pre-surgery checklist in theatre, making sure they have the right patient and right procedure, and she stares at the identification band on the man’s wrist. She catches herself thinking about Rohan’s bands and how they were too big for him, even on the tightest notch, so the nurse had to punch another hole to secure them.  
  
She stays back late to wait for her patient to come to the ICU post-surgery, because he has no family or friends to check in on him. (She also stays back late to make sure Inder clocks off and goes home, not that she tells him or makes it obvious or anything.) Down at the main entrance, she catches sight of Rohan’s parents by the front elevators – his father seems dazed, his arm around his wife, whose face is hidden but whose sobs are audible. Their grief is palpable even from where she is standing, like the worst kind of forcefield is surrounding them.  
  
The entire drive home, she thinks about Rohan. She thinks of how they put a heart into a patient this afternoon, because the guy was born with a bad one that lasted 32 years before it even threatened to give out, and how there’s no replacement organ for Rohan’s parents, who created a perfect heart that didn’t even make it to term before it simply stopped beating. She thinks of how it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.  
  
When she gets to David’s apartment, sliding the spare key that became hers way quicker than hers became his into the lock, he is sprawled on the couch fast asleep, his glasses perched crookedly on his face. (She finds it incredibly weird that he still won’t sleep in his own damn bed alone.) Leaning against the doorframe, she just watches him for a moment, his long limbs, his slightly mussed hair – he is so whole and beautiful that it makes her strangely sad.  
  
She eases onto the couch as carefully as she can but it’s a bit narrow and he wakes anyway, a sleepy smile taking over his face when he sees her. “Hey,” he says in a quiet voice, arm curling around her as she turns in to the familiar space. He strokes her hair slowly and her lips are wet against his neck; she cries for Rohan and his parents. For Inder. For all the little hearts up in the NICU.  
  
(Next day, she stops on the way to work and gets Inder’s coffee order from his favourite café, leaves it on his desk, and when he sees her on rounds, he lifts the cup in acknowledgement and smiles a small smile at her.)

 

 

**(86)**

  
His parents live in this sprawling red-brick house out in the suburbs of Ann Arbor with their recent college graduate daughter and a giant golden retriever named Lucky. His three brothers and their assorted spouses and partners and children spill in over the driveway; a small horde of human tumbleweeds weave in and out of her path and threaten her balance the entire afternoon. She seemingly can't turn anywhere without almost stepping on a little foot or knocking a little head.  
  
Everyone is excruciatingly polite at first, all nods and mumbled niceties. His siblings are so ridiculously attractive and exceedingly accomplished that it is unnerving, each one more perfect than the next. His father is quiet and somewhat stoic but when he shakes her hand, she sees David in his eyes and smile and feels an instant warmth towards him. His mother, unexpectedly blonde and statuesque and with the same bone structure as her sons, fusses over David good-naturedly. She exudes an air of effortless elegance and Miranda suddenly feels decidedly underwhelming in her jeans and careless ponytail.  
  
She meets Christine, David's 22-year-old baby sister, waifish and leggy with a full, red-lipsticked mouth that grins widely at her when he introduces them. "Just so you know, he’s really not used to being the ugly one in the relationship," she says faux-conspiratorially, while David rolls his eyes. “He’s also a classic middle child, so good luck with that.” Miranda finds it difficult not to take an instant liking to her.  
  
Lunch is a mishmash of cultures, with Korean BBQ and pasta salad and a dish that looks like lasagne but isn't lasagne made by one of David's sisters-in-law and apple pie and something called gangjeong . She sits next to Christine and one of the brothers, Henry, and between them they keep up a lively stream of chatter that comfortably surrounds her and distracts from the fact that she is a tad overwhelmed and keeping mostly to herself. David runs around the backyard with his nieces and nephews, plays kickball and tag and Simon Says and whatever else they ask of him.  
  
At some point, she looks over to find him holding his newest nephew, 3-month-old Jack, and it’s like he physically transforms right in front of her, softening in stance, all easy arms and familiar hold, peppering Jack’s chubby cheeks with kisses. It is almost disconcerting to watch this foreign version of him and yet, it is utterly unsurprising all the same. He glances up, catching her eyes for a moment and she turns away, biting her lip to keep herself in check.  
  
Jack’s mother casually asks if she wants to hold the baby and she can’t shake her head fast enough, but all she says is a quick, “I’m not good with babies.”  
  
Christine sidles up alongside her, giving her a sly glance. “David _loves_ babies,” she says a touch impishly, and Miranda cannot come up with any sort of response that isn’t incredibly awkward but then Christine laughs and the moment dissipates.  
  
(For some reason, she thinks of the Implanon she’s had inserted, the one she hasn’t told David about yet.)  
  
They leave in the late afternoon in order to catch their flight to Pittsburgh and his mother gives her a stiff-armed hug and tells David to bring her back next time. His father pats her shoulder warmly and calls him “Dae-Hyun”.  She asks him later what it means and he smiles his father’s smile. “Something about great and honour,” he says, his spirits still high from their trip. His eyes are bright and there’s something loose and carefree about him.  
  
“So you’re great and honourable?”  
  
“I mean…if you say so,” he turns to her, grin now positively cheeky. He pokes a finger at her ribs and she automatically slaps him away but he’s too quick, wrapping an arm around her mid-section and pulling her into his side. “Hey,” he says a little more seriously now, mouth at the top of her head. “Thanks for coming with me.”  
  
She relents and leans into the familiar space, shifting to un-wedge her arm, her face upturned to look at him. “You’re welcome,” she says. She wants to say something else but she doesn’t have the words, has never really had these words to begin with (the good words, the ones that aren’t angry and hurtful and mean) and so she just lets her arm close in a little tighter around him, fingers dancing on his skin in something quite adjacent to affection.  
  


 

**(58)**

  
She gets a random text from an old friend. An old boyfriend. He’s passing through Philly and wants to know if she’s around to have dinner. Okay, so it’s not completely random because they keep up intermittently: she calls him whenever she’s traversing down south and he remembers every birthday, holiday and anniversary. They still have a lot of love for each other, even after all these years, even though their spark died out a long time ago.  
  
They don’t update each other on a lot of things but they somehow manage to keep a dialogue that picks up where it left off, each time, no matter if it’s been weeks, months or years in-between. He’s a regular on social media, a total Insta whore by his own admission, and that’s how she finds out he recently married. She swipes through his latest photos: his wife is pretty, he is as beautiful as ever. She has always been so taken with his face and in her mind’s eye, he remains 16 and perfect.  
  
She remembers the summer she first met him, how the blue of his eyes matched the cloudless skies above them, the lake that they dangled their legs into for hours on end, the way he held her face when he kissed her. She remembers how the world ended when she was expelled from school and they were separated by several states. She remembers how, by pure chance, she’d seen him again three years later, during her first year of medical school, how she’d initially been jealous of the gorgeous girl hanging on his arm and how that girl had wound up going home with her. How he had graciously met them for breakfast the following day.  
  
She has always loved how nothing ever seems to faze him. Not when she stole a second girlfriend from him, or when she showed up to his apartment after the Boston incident and begged him to let her stay. Not even when the police called him to collect her wasted-beyond-recognition, sorry, pathetic self after her mother’s funeral because she couldn’t think of anyone else who would actually come.  
  
She texts him back to say their schedules don’t align this time. When he calls five minutes later, she smiles and takes her phone out onto the back porch. They talk about everything and nothing, filling every silence before it even has a chance to bubble into existence. He asks her if she’s seeing anyone. She hesitates for the merest second and then she says, “No.” He moves onto the next question and her answer quickly falls by the wayside.  
  
After they hang up, she stays out on the porch, leaning against the railing and staring into the kitchen window, where David’s squinting at a recipe on his phone and absently pushing a spatula around a pan of something. It feels a little like she’s betrayed him, even though he has no idea.  
  
(If she’s completely honest, it actually feels a little like she’s betrayed herself too.)  
  


 

**(100)**

  
They’ve been mostly off for the last week; the two times he came around after work he ended up sleeping on her couch. She cannot bring herself to admit to any fault here – she, of course, being the one with the incredibly mature attitude and complete willingness to talk things through. All sarcasm aside, she muses on the fact that she replaces people’s freaking organs for a living, but is somehow incapable of resolving her personal issues when push comes to shove and to be quite honest, this has been her modus operandi (or lack thereof) for as long as she can remember.  
  
She takes lead on a procurement run to Dallas with Pam and David in tow, for a pancreas and a liver from two separate victims in a multi-car MVA. The entire flight, she keeps to herself and stares out the window and David stares out the other window and Pam keeps looking between the two of them curiously and attempting to goad them into talking to her. When they finally get to Baylor, the nurse turns around and blocks their path, barring them from entering the hospital.  
  
“I just want you two to be clear, whatever shit you’ve got going on with each other, it stays outside these doors,” Pam tells them in her no-nonsense voice.  
  
He gives her a quick look that she returns in kind and they both nod at Pam, who shakes her head slightly and allows them to move forward. They scrub in alongside a team from New York – specifically from her old stomping grounds, Mount Sinai – and she is a little stunned when she comes face to face with a former peer, this douche-nozzle of a guy named Richard who had been witness to her spectacularly explosive exit from the residency program.  
  
“Miranda Foster,” he says, dragging out the syllables. “Fancy seeing you here, all scrubbed up and ready to cut. I thought for sure you’d have switched out of surgery.”  
  
“Richie,” she replies, curling her lip in distaste. “I thought for sure you’d have never made it through internship, but here we are.”  
  
He narrows his eyes and behind her, she feels rather than sees David’s quiet unease. “It’s Richard, thanks,” he says. “And I’ll be sure to mention to the others to watch out for flying sharp objects in there.”  
  
“I wouldn’t worry about the others,” she shoots back. “My aim’s only gotten better since.”  
  
“Miranda.” David’s voice at her ear is low and urgent, holding her back with his tone as Richard chuckles and pushes through to the operating suite, and she spins around to glare at him. The action is so immediately familiar that she realises with some shame how often they’ve been here before, how often he’s stepped in to intervene upon her overreacting, to save her from herself. She sags a little, dropping her shoulders, and Pam watches on with wary eyes. “Would you please start the sterile slush?” he says over his shoulder and Pam hesitates, looking to her for a moment, so she nods once and the nurse moves away to get the bags.  
  
“Are you going to be okay in there?” he asks her. His eyes search her face and his hands hover at either side of her, as if to hold her but he can’t without contaminating his gloves. She nods again. “Alright,” he says. “We’ll let them finish up with the lungs before we move in and start.” She is grateful for his taking charge of the moment.  
  
She is also so not okay in there.  
  
Richard and his team take forever with the lungs and so they start on the second donor for the pancreas, until halfway through when the first donor’s organs start teetering on the window of unviability and she has to quickly switch out with David to have a chance of harvesting the liver in time. With her team in the other suite, she is forced to rely on the Mount Sinai group to assist her, Richard breathing down her neck the entire time. Her hand shakes ever so slightly as she makes an incision and he notices. “Steady on there, Miranda,” he says, his tone mocking. “Don’t blow it again.”  
  
She keeps her eyes trained on the organ, refuses to give him the satisfaction of letting him see it get to her. Her sore and sorry history sits just under the surface of her skin where it’s been dredged up and she wills herself to keep moving, to concentrate solely on the dead patient lying in front of her instead of the myriad ghosts of her past that are vying to break through. However, when Richard’s junior colleague clamps off the portal vein and hands him the blade instead of her, she sees red.  
  
“You sure you can handle this?” he asks her, dangling the instrument just out of her reach.  
  
She allows herself a moment, one quick moment to snap, as she snatches it out of his grip. “Get out of my way,” she all but snarls, roughly throwing out an elbow before re-positioning herself. She hears the murmurs of disapproval from the rest of the room but doesn’t look up again, carefully isolating the inferior vena cava. She doesn’t lift her gaze until she hears David’s voice, as he tags in and takes up his place opposite her. The knot in her stomach doesn’t exactly dissipate, not when Richard smirks his way out of the suite in a manner that suggests she hasn’t heard the last of him, but it unravels somewhat when she looks up from the procured liver to see David’s eyes on her, as dark and warm as they’ve ever been.  
  
“Pancreas okay?” she mutters from under her mask, and he nods.  
  
“You alright?” he asks back, passing the scissors to her. Their double-gloved, bloodstained fingers meet briefly and when she glances at him again, there is something else in his gaze that pulls at her. She fights the urge to touch him again and, with great, teeth-gritting effort, the sudden want to lay her skin on his, to feel his pulse thrumming beneath her.  
  
He takes her hand as they walk to the airstrip and she grips his fingers tight while Pam pretends not to notice. In fact, the nurse employs some rare tact and deliberately keeps her back to them the entire trip home – not that they actually do anything because they haven’t completely lost their minds.  
  
(There’s also the matter of the small and awkward gap between their seats serving as an aisle, so she sits restlessly in her place and sort of maybe intensely eye fucks him a great deal of the way back to Three Rivers.)  
  
On solid ground she works on autopilot, running the pancreas into Andy’s suite while the liver goes to Sophia, and scribbling through a procurement report to slap onto Ryan’s desk. Then, and only then, does she finally lose her damn mind.  
  
She blanks on everything else except her need to find David and when she does, he takes charge once more, leading her into one of the empty lecture theatres. In a dark corner at the top, behind the last row of seats, she kisses him hard and deep, pressing herself desperately against him even as they fumble to remove their clothes. She aches, actually physically _aches_ for him, and when he pulls back to say, “I don’t have a –”, it is all she can do to exhale in reply, “It doesn’t matter”, before opening her hips wider and sliding her thighs over him.  
  
The feel of him unsheathed within her, after days of not even touching him, almost pushes her off the brink right then and there. He groans quietly, a guttural sound that pools deep in her chest, and then he shifts ever so slightly and she lifts her head, her lips catching at his. They move together, burning skin on burning skin, laboured breathing echoing around the room; his fingers grip her waist so tightly when he comes, his breath catching as he says her name, and she swears it’s that hitch that ends her too.  
  
They stay like that a beat, melded together, and her heart pounds like it’s going to burst right out of her chest. She feels loose-jointed and even looser-tongued, like all her insides are slippery and threatening to spill forth, and when she opens her mouth she’s not even sure what she’s about to say. “David, I –,” she whispers, her breathing still uneven, and he shushes her softly.  
  
His fingers press gently at the outer corners of her eyes, at the wetness she hasn’t even realised was there until now. “It’s okay,” he says, unbearably tender, and he kisses her slowly, like they have all the time in the world, and he touches her like he knows her, like he won’t ever get tired of this. (Of them.)  
  
(She scrapes her beyond-saving hair into a haphazard bun at the nape of her neck, swipes at her face, double-checks her zips and buttons, and if she still looks fucked in all senses of that word, there is not much she can do to negate that.)  
  
She struggles to get through the rest of the afternoon, especially after word trickles down that Richard officially filed a complaint about her behaviour, and so she takes herself down to records, deliberately spends the remainder of her shift inputting data. Here, away from the main hub, she can at least try to focus her dwindling energies on something other than the way she’s practically leaking emotions from the seams. Here, she begins to unpack her thoughts and comprehend just how far gone she is – and it’s further than she’s comfortable with admitting, truth be told. It’s further than she possibly intended, and definitely a lot further than she thought herself capable of going. Still, it’s a little disconcerting how relatively well she’s taking this gut punch of a realisation, all things considered.  
  
He reappears at her door that night and they don’t speak a single coherent word for almost two hours, until the sheets finally work their way off her bed completely and she’s left spent and cooling, slumped against his frame. All she can smell is him and all she can hear are their threaded heartbeats.  
  
She falls asleep to the feel of his fingers carding through her hair, to the rise and fall of his chest, and for the first time in a week, she sleeps straight through till morning.  
  


 

**(30)**

  
They finally break her dining table and she thinks it was only a matter of time. She lets him patch up the bigger scrapes on her body and muses about how much of their time together is spent _being together_. Clothing itself seems extraneous when they inevitably wind up entangled in each other, and sometimes it seems like they’re nothing more than their basest, most primal instincts, a pair of wild animals in heat. Even then, she still feels an impossible need for something else, something she can't quite get at, so she scratches him, claws at his hair, bites at his skin. It’s like being naked is not naked enough, like she wants to tear at his surfaces, get deeper somehow. She thinks of their layers – _epidermis, dermis_ , _subcutaneous tissue_ – merging into one flesh.  
  
(Afterwards, she stares at the marks she leaves on his body, traces them with her fingers.)  
  
In the short time that this has been happening, it has quickly become apparent that they are good at being together, that their bodies respond to each other’s undeniably well. He is an attentive bedmate, his reputation there is well-earned, and he keeps up with her commendably; if he is occasionally thrown to the wayside by her stamina, it’s only because she can sometimes be near-insatiable, the erstwhile tendency for excess a remnant from her past.  
  
(She asks when he was last tested one night when they run out of condoms and he raises an eyebrow, asks her back – _when were you?_ – and while he seems surprised when she pulls out her clean bill of health, dated two months back, he doesn’t say anything more and instead makes a clinic appointment for himself.)  
  
She knows somewhere in the back of her mind that there is a distinct possibility that they’ll tire of each other quickly, because they both use sex to distraction, to skirt their issues. Despite his façade, she suspects his self-esteem – his constant need to impress and be adored are a dead giveaway. Her own issues are plentiful and this aspect of her is a work in progress, still rough around the edges and prone to revert to old habits.  (Sometimes in a low moment, she wonders how she’s not worse for the wear, how she will ever come back from those meaningless nights and self-destructive days.) They are both somewhat fucked up in this department and likely an inherently terrible pairing but if he realises, he hasn’t given any indication and she’s not yet ready to give this up on the mere prospect of implosion and disrepair.  
  
(They end up buying condoms again because her compliance with the pill is spotty at best but the possibility of removing the final physical barrier between them hangs heavily in the air, weighting their actions.)  
  
After they lug all the broken wooden parts outside, she presses him down onto the bed, her grazed skin scraping against his in a way that stings and makes her want to push harder, harder. When she comes, she squeezes her eyelids shut and clamps her lips together, breathing hard through her nose.  
  


 

**(65)**

  
Luc shows up in the OR again with his stupid surgical robot and he gives her this leering grin when he sees her. It is actually more than likely just a normal grin, but she honestly can't look at him without feeling disgust and shame and it tends to colour everything else. (For the record, she is still mad at herself but a part of her blames him entirely.)  
  
She doesn’t realise David is hovering until just after midday, when she turns and he almost walks into her for the third time. “What the hell are you doing?” she asks, looking him over. He’s been shadowing her all morning, volunteering to help out on her cases, and generally getting in her way.  
  
“Nothing,” he says, stepping out of her path. “Sorry.”  
  
She blinks and he looks away quickly, rubbing a hand at the back of his neck, a small vein by his left eye bulging ever so slightly, and it finally clicks. A few weeks ago, she would have laughed or teased him or possibly become indignant at the implication that she needs saving or protecting, but right now, she doesn’t say anything.  
  
He shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other, hands at his hips, pushing the white coat out behind him. “I’m going to get some lunch,” he finally says and she lets him go without a word.  
  
He and Inder head off to Chicago in the afternoon to procure the heart for Luc’s patient and she stays behind to scrub in and assist. She reluctantly joins Luc and Sophia for a pre-op meeting and across the floor she can see David preparing the bags, looking like someone just kicked his dog. Luc and his cologne sit next to her and her stomach churns a little but she keeps it together – just. She tries really hard to keep a lid on the visceral memories that threaten to overtake her focus and it’s easier when they get into theatre and Inder delivers the heart, when she can step back and watch the robot do whatever it’s supposed to do. She looks up partway through the procedure and sees Andy and David watching from the observation deck, Andy staring into the patient’s chest cavity, David with his hands shoved into his pockets, staring at her. She feels the intensity somewhere deeper than her surfaces.  
  
She goes to look for him afterwards and at first he thinks she’s mad at him. He starts apologising as she pulls him into the supply room and pushes him into the farthest corner, covers his mouth with hers. “It’s okay,” she breathes out after a moment. “I’m okay.”  
  
So he puts his hands on either side of her face and tilts her back to his lips, kissing her like they’re not hiding out at work, body hard and flush against hers like there’s no chance someone will walk in on them at any second. She doesn’t really care if someone does. There is something in his manner, his touch, that she is slowly starting to understand, is becoming awfully accustomed to, and she wants to hold onto it despite herself.  
  
Lori bursts in a few minutes later and she swears he almost dislocates some fingers trying to remove his hands from under her scrubs. She snickers under her breath as he tows her out past the wide-eyed EMT, squeezes his fingers in parting as they diverge at the elevators.  
  


 

**(37)**

  
She gets a haircut because she’s sick of straightening her curls into work-appropriate waviness, so she decides to just buck the establishment completely. The cut barely brushes the top of her shoulders, the layers all jagged and choppy, the fringe a bit too long and hanging in her eyes. It’s a stark contrast to how most of Three Rivers knows her, but the style is actually similar to how she wore it all through med school and the first few tattered years of residency. Actually, it's not so much a style as it is a funky mess, and without spending an hour in front of the mirror each morning, it looks pretty fucking terrible. She remembers this too late the day after it's done.  
  
At work, he emerges from an elevator, does a double take and then sidles up beside her. "Interesting," he nods. She shrugs self-consciously – _whatever –_ and takes off for her morning rounds at the ICU.  
  
Everyone feels compelled to comment on it, even though they’ve all seen her ID tag on the daily with an even shorter version of this – _because everyone is kind of an idiot_. Pam whistles at her and sasses, “Looking good for someone special?” Andy, who has previously known her in this incarnation, smiles and says with exaggerated fear, “She’s back!” Lisa asks for the name of the salon, as if _she_ of all people is going to consider doing something in a similar vein, and she has to hold back her eye roll so hard it hurts. Ryan doesn’t actually say anything, just gapes at her all day.  
  
Later, by the dying light outside the bedroom window, he gently tugs at the shorter spikes that have kinked out sideways. "It suits you," he says after a while. "Suits you a lot."  
  
"Yeah? You don't think I look like I stuck my finger in a socket?"  
  
He laughs. "Well, you do. But it looks crazy hot."  
  
"Or maybe just crazy," she says, falling quiet.  
  
She thinks of her mother and the unruly tangle of curly hair that tumbles unkempt down her back, the kind that is impossible to comb without daily maintenance, and how one day she just gives up, takes a pair of scissors and hacks off the once-cherished mane. She feels a sudden sorrow about it now, some ten years later.  
  
"Hey," he murmurs, crooking a finger under her chin, mistaking her silence and fixed gaze for something else. "You're so beautiful."  
  
She doesn't look at him, can barely stand to hear that type of shit on a good day let alone today, so she closes her eyes and concentrates on breathing steadily until she falls asleep.  
  


 

**(120)**

  
He asks her on a Tuesday, she agrees on a Friday and they do it on a Sunday.  
  
They take his bed because hers is obviously too small. His giant flat screen makes the crossover and he unceremoniously dumps her perfectly functional 32-inch by the wayside. (She rescues it before he can add it to the 'to-throw' pile, sets it up in the bedroom above his ugly, monochrome coffee table, the one that matches nothing in her house.)  
  
He gives away most of his kitchenware, seeing as he never knew what to do with them in the first place, but hangs onto his espresso maker, which she concedes is fair enough. Ryan, who initially volunteers himself for heavy lifting but has since drifted towards unpacking boxes, picks through the pots and pans and sets aside a little collection for himself.  
  
She fights with him about a pair of lamps that he wants to place in the living room and a bookcase he insists on keeping, even though hers is bigger and therein more practical. They keep sending Ryan out to get more storage containers and the stack in her garage grows ever larger. He has more clothes and more pairs of shoes than her and with some reluctance, she lets him take over the closet in the second bedroom. He proudly places his toothbrush alongside hers and gives her the cheesiest grin, wiggling his eyebrows.  
  
By nightfall, they are nowhere near finished but his apartment is finally empty. Andy drops by with beers and takeout and looks around the disaster zone of a kitchen. “This happened a lot faster that I thought it would,” he says, and she’s unsure if he means the state of packing and unpacking, or the actual move to cohabitation. David suddenly realises he can’t remember where he packed his work gear and laptop and chargers, and they start digging through even more boxes like a group of rabid terriers. (Ryan unearths it all in a container marked ‘Misc.’)  
  
After everyone leaves, she slumps onto the couch (now loaded with a few extra cushions) and watches him pick his way amongst the strewn debris. He collapses down next to her, puts his head in her lap, and stares up at the underside of her chin. She absentmindedly fingers the neck of his shirt, running a thumb across his collarbone. “Do you think we’ll regret this?” she asks.  
  
He lets out a small huff of laughter. “Yes, most definitely. I already do and we’re not even done.”  
  
She laughs too and when she looks down at him, his eyes have closed, his head turned in to her stomach. The house is quiet and she relishes in the glorious domestic chaos around them, the feel of him solid and heavy and warm against her. He breathes deeply in and out and it strikes her as rather wonderous that he is here, that _they_ are here – that despite their unique set of odds, the entire unlikeliness of this situation, there exists this space they’ve built between them. She doesn’t know how it happened but somewhere, in the middle of all this, he’s become her one constant.  
  
(She still laughs at people like this but it’s a little different now, like maybe they’re the best kind of ridiculous fools.)  
  


 

**(16)**

  
Halfway to work, stuck on the Parkway East, she changes her mind about outing herself – or rather, outing them. She flicks her keychain around and around her finger, stares out the window at the lines of traffic inching along, and flips on the decision to casually come out together for the fifth time since the night before. Somehow, the impulsive whim seems a lot more ill-conceived in the morning light and with no caffeine to her system, she is no longer prepared to waltz into Three Rivers and announce to all and sundry that she and David are a thing – it’s just too much.  
  
In fairness, she isn’t backpedalling over a little unease, a little change of heart – she’s been burnt before. Years prior to her even starting at the hospital, the rumour mill was rife with whisperings about her father and Sophia; she remembers too well the discomfort and embarrassment, the anger, the sense that it was beyond her control, all just from being _in_ directly involved. She’s spent her entire career here thus far trying not to let anyone have any more reason to discuss her personal life, so the very fact that they are driving in together, in his stupid, shiny, _ostentatious as fuck_ Mercedes, is screamingly at odds with this.  
  
She fights the urge to tell him to turn the car around, tries to ignore the dread that’s manifesting inside of her. For his part, David appears unfazed and moreover, unaware of her misgivings. She looks over at him where he is intermittently whistling along and tapping his steering wheel to the beat of a song on the radio, his face relaxed and practically cheerful, and it takes a lot of effort to not hate him right now. The dashboard clock indicates they’re twenty minutes away from being late – she finds herself hoping that the traffic never clears and that they’re forced sit here in this purgatory stretch of highway, just so she doesn’t have to make a decision.  
  
(Of fuckin’ course, that then means they make it to work with two minutes to spare.)  
  
He slides neatly into a park and she tries to hunch down a little in the passenger seat, on the pretext of digging through her bag for something. When he chuckles, honestly _chuckles_ , and goes to put a hand on her arm she twists herself out of reach, eyes flashing behind her aviators. “Did you want to recline the seat?” he asks, still slightly amused. “Then you’ll be completely out of view.” She pauses and almost considers this, still in her half-hunch, and that’s when he looks a bit like she’s slapped him. “Miranda, I was kidding.”  
  
She tries to reply but her lips stick, tongue dry, so she swallows hard and tries again. “I don’t want to do this. Not today.”  
  
He is quiet for a moment, gazing at her, and then he gives her this smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Okay,” he finally says, but she cannot detect anything save for amiability in his tone. His face is neutral but she doesn’t actually want to stop and consider his feelings too deeply, so she takes it.  
  
She exits the car quickly, alone, and keeps her head down as she walks towards the elevator. He waits for the next one so that they don’t spill out onto the main floor together and she is so relieved to see the long list of scheduled procedures for the day that she actually relaxes. He and Andy join her a while later and they work-up a 47-year-old football coach for a pancreas, a 20-year-old student for a heart, and a 55-year-old restaurant manager for a liver. In between, Andy catches up with her about last Friday, his eyes concernedly running over the healing marks on her face. He chides her for not calling him back, for only texting a brief _I’m okay, talk later_ to allay him, and she has to assure him that she really is alright. David, on the other hand, doesn’t say much to anyone least of all her, and he disappears fairly quickly after the morning round but no one seems to notice anything out of the ordinary.  
  
No one, that is, expect Pam.  
  
She is updating her notes at the main work station, a gaggle of nurses chatting and laughing behind her, when she overhears Pam telling some story that involves her fielding a call from a doctor urgently requesting the address of another doctor after midnight on Saturday. (This at least answers the question of how he ended up outside her front door.) The others exclaim and gasp over this like the vapid gossipmongers that they are and ask Pam to reveal names, but to the nurse’s credit she doesn’t. She also doesn’t do a thing about their guessing however, egging them on when they come even quasi-close to identifying the two, and Miranda grips her pen so tightly she’s surprised it doesn’t snap in half.  
  
The afternoon is unbearable because she’s not out doing procurement runs and so she keeps running into Pam in every corner of the hospital, even in the cafeteria. The nurse throws her a wicked grin each time, eyes sparkling with obvious delight, and she tries her hardest to ignore them but if looks could kill then Pam would already be dead.  Later on still, Pam takes to hovering at the work station, dropping loaded remarks left and right and Ryan, overly eager, demented man-child Ryan, sits up and takes notice. It doesn’t take long for him to start running his mouth.  
  
“Dr Lagana and Dr Khouri?” he asks.  
  
Pam shakes her head. “Isn’t Yousef married?” the nurse asks, but Ryan just shrugs it off.  
  
“Dr Lagana and…David?” he tries again.  
  
“You’re _half_ right!” Pam says with gusto and Ryan slaps the desk with his hand. Miranda grits her teeth but determinedly keeps reading through her progress notes, giving Pam nothing.  
  
“So, Dr Lagana and Inder?” Ryan asks, face beaming with anticipation.  
  
“Dr Lagana and Inder what?” cuts through a new voice, _his_ voice. She sneaks a glance up and sees him striding towards the desks, running a hand through his scrub cap flattened hair. He’s wearing those weird, form-fitting, supposedly eco-friendly, blue scrubs the hospital tried to endorse a while back, the ones most of the staff mysteriously misplaced soon after launch; she suspects he actually likes wearing his set because of the way they cling to his body. (She’s not exactly saying she minds him wearing them either, but she doesn’t intend on telling him.)  
  
Pam smirks as Ryan jumps in to explain and all the while she can feel his unwavering gaze on her, but all he says in response is a mild, “Really?”  
  
Pam, not content to let it lie, comes around to face them and presses a bit further. “Any guesses, you two?”  
  
_Oh for fuck’s sake._ She stalks off to the ICU to find another desk. (She hears about Inder having to deny the Dr Lagana rumour, not least because it turns out Lagana is newly engaged. She feels only the tiniest bit bad for him.)  
  
Her shift finally, blessedly, comes to an end and she sees him handing over to the evening cover resident, his black leather jacket in hand. She makes her way onto the floor and immediately notices one or two of the female nurses giving her a look that she normally wouldn’t think twice about, but today it sets her on edge. Ryan is still acting like he’s competing for some prize (“David and that hepatologist!”) and Pam and Andy are engrossed in a conversation that looks entirely too amusing to be work-related, and she is just done. So fuckin’ _done_.  
  
She gathers her bag and coat, casually walks up to him, pulls him towards her and kisses him. “Wanna get out of here?” she asks, deadpan. He looks at her with something like amusement and maybe a bit of awe in his eyes, but his smile is warm and she realises she missed being around him at work today. Over his shoulder, Ryan’s eyes are bugging out of his head (“Really? _Really?!_ ”) and Pam is whooping and hollering, but she pays them no mind and just threads her fingers through his, walks away from the ridiculousness.  
  
Outside, he pulls her back a moment, pushes an errant strand of hair off her face, and he asks her if it was really so bad. She shoves at his chest and turns away before he can see the smile breaking across her face.  
  
He should really know it's only just begun.

 


End file.
